The Somerset County Vocational and Technical Schools in Bridgewater plans to charge new tuition fees to the districts in the county where vocational-technical students live. Above is an October 2008 file photo of a student writing in a notebook.Conner Jay/The Jersey Journal

BRIDGEWATER — For the upcoming school year, school districts in Somerset County will face what has become common in most other parts of the state: a tuition bill from the county vocational-technical school.

The Somerset County Vocational and Technical Schools in Bridgewater is charging new tuition fees to districts in the county where vocational-technical students live. Nearly all of the county vocational-technical schools in New Jersey already collect such payments.

Most of the SCVTS funding comes from the county, and officials said the tuition fees will help offset the county’s share.

“It’s not like we’re making money off this at all,” said Freeholder Director Patrick Scaglione, adding that county officials are “still subsidizing the vo-tech to the tune of millions of dollars a year.”

The new tuition fees will be $1,000 for a full-time student and $500 for a share-time student, meaning a student who also attends the home district. The new fees are estimated to total slightly less than $500,000 in the school’s roughly $15 million budget for the 2014-2015 school year, said SCVTS Superintendent Chrys Harttraft.

Sending districts in the county currently pay tuition for SCVTS students involved in two specific programs, but the new fees would represent the first tuition payments for regular vocational programs, Harttraft said. Sending districts in other counties already pay higher tuition rates for SCVTS students from those municipalities, she said.

The new fees, however, are below the more than $3,000 in full-time, per-student tuition rates that state officials have said the school could charge its sending districts, Harttraft said.

“They have to…make some very hard decisions at their level to add another line item, and that’s why we were really concerned with the amount that we were gonna be charging,” Harttraft said. “So this is a nominal amount in comparison to what it costs to educate the students here.”

Across the state, per-student tuition rates charged by county vocational-technical schools for in-county students range from $500 to $9,298 for regular education students, and from $500 to $11,500 for special education students, according to Harttraft.

The impact on school districts in Somerset County will vary depending on the number of SCVTS students from each sending district. For example, the Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District has projected $129,000 for the new tuition expenses, while the Montgomery Township School District is budgeting $2,500, officials said.

Thomas Venanzi, the school business administrator in Montgomery, said “it’s obviously a concern that it’s an added cost,” but noted that the new fees will have a minor effect on a district like Montgomery.

“In the county, we’re used to sending those students to the vo-tech school at no tuition…this is something that we need to adjust to,” Venanzi said.

Of the 21 county vocational-technical schools in the state, SCVTS is one of only three schools that do not charge tuition to sending districts in their counties, said Judy Savage, executive director of the New Jersey Council of County Vocational-Technical Schools. The other two schools are in Middlesex and Hudson counties, Savage said.

Faced with limited funding on the state and county levels, more county vocational districts have turned to charging those tuition fees, Savage said. For instance, Sussex County Technical School began charging a tuition fee in recent years, Savage said.

“It’s a necessary thing to do at this point in time,” said Savage, adding that Somerset County “has funded the vocational school very, very generously over the years…and now some small local contribution is needed in Somerset County just as it is in the majority of other counties in the state so that the programs can be maintained at their current level.”